Calvin Synod Herald, 2006 (107. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2006-09-01 / 9-10. szám
4 CALVIN SYNOD HERALD Christian Education Conference Lakeside Classis of the Calvin Synod On July 8, 2006, God finally answered our prayers to try and unify our Christian Education Program. A seminar was held at the Hungarian Reformed Church of Lorain Ohio UCC. After many years of meeting, reporting and discussing, an organized seminar took place. A representative from the David C. Cook Publishing Company agreed to meet with member churches of the Lakeside Classis, Calvin Synod. The material presented was tailored to the Reformed Tradition of our denomination. The coordinating representative from the company was Peter Zickefoose. I shall refer to the representative from now on as Pete, which he preferred to be called. Pete is truly a man of God and takes his work very seriously. Pete’s appearance is very dignified and he had a very good voice. He shared the content of his presentation in a manner that included wisdom, intelligence, humor, singing, prayers, and even some magic tricks. He listens when need be and sells with the vigor that explained his first bible verse shared early in the presentation - “In every way make the teaching about our God and Savior attractive.” (Titus 2 10b NIV) We started the day with a social hour from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Representatives from six churches were present. Lorain, Ohio - 10 Toledo, Ohio - 4 Fairport Harbor, Ohio - 2 Walton Hills, Ohio - 2 Dayton, Ohio - 2 Whiting, Indiana - 1 The second hour was spent exchanging ideas. Sue Fortner did a presentation on children’s missions covering: learning, praying, and giving. Mission needs to be a regular part of Christian life that they could participate in, see the results and make a personal commitment. Handouts were prepared on sample missions, levels of bible comprehension and skills, ideas for reaching out and keeping children in an education program and back-to-school activities to start the new session. Next we had Jill Pongracz Murrell who presented a study for selecting music for Sunday School. She started with the word DREAM. D = Developmental^ Appropriate R = Relevant E = Educational A = Awe-inspiring M = Memorable When selecting music for children, one must understand the awesome responsibility of this type of ministry. We live in a very visual and aurally stimulating society and we must take that into consideration when dealing with our 21st Century children! Therefore, we need to expose them to a wide variety of music that incorporates the above mentioned qualities. Developmentally appropriate means that the songs are easy enough for the little ones and interesting enough for the “tweens.” Relevant means that they have some type of impact on the children and are timely. They could reflect a special time of the year or perhaps help the children deal with something important that impacts their daily lives. Educational refers to songs that one could use to coordinate with the Sunday School lesson or children’s sermon. Awe-inspiring - this is difficult! But if you can find music that touches the children’s heart, they will be able to call upon that feeling of inspiration in times of trouble. Memorable - these are the songs that we all still remember from our Sunday School days and may include songs that they will sing with the adult congregation when they are older. She then gave us samples of songs that would fill the criterion and we ended her presentation with learning and singing a song sung in a round. Pete took over the floor and presented us with a brief talk on Learning Styles. He broke it down into four categories: Innovative, Analytic, Common Sense and Dynamic. Innovative - love, talk and listen, be in tune with feelings, know who they are. Analytic - wisdom, just the facts, bottom line, one thing at a time. Common Sense - justice, here and now, black and white, all or nothing. Dynamic - courage, encourage, survivor, endurance, hates routine. I think you have gotten the drift by now. He continued with Leadership Styles - counselor, sympathetic, friendly, theoretician and etc. He talked about weaknesses such as pliable, dependent, can be sloppy, server, or moralistic and many more. The necessity of music was stressed. Lunch was served. During our lunch break, we got to mingle and talk about the first part of the presentations. We got to view the wonderful display of materials that Pete made available with good explanations on much new and innovative material that Cook Publishing has on the market. One could only wish that the entire Synod could have joined us on this day, perhaps in the future at our next Calvin Synod Meeting. Pete started off the second half of the day with a talk on positives and drawbacks of three Sunday School Patterns. This was based on a 2003 poll of 261 churches. The first was the Rotation Model. This is now called “Multidimensional Learning” and sometimes “Theme Room Approach.” The model was developed to combat the following problems: 1. Sporadic attendance 2. Inconsistent teachers 3. To little time to really interact with a different story or concept every week 4. Traditional scope and sequence depends on kids being there
